Eli Grba, who will throw out the first pitch Friday night at the Angels' home opener, was the opening-day starter in the club's inaugural game when Major League Baseball first expanded in 1961.

"Oh my goodness, my knees will be knocking," admits Grba, 76, who will throw out the first pitch in the Angels' home opener against the Toronto Blue Jays. "It's an honor. I just wish they could have had the whole '61 team there."

Fifty years ago on April 11, Grba stood on the mound at Baltimore's Memorial Stadium and helped inaugurate the Expansion Era in Major League Baseball. The "new" Washington Senators had debuted the day before, marking the beginning of an initiative that would help fuel the explosive growth of professional sports in America.

Baseball attendance would swell by 44% in the 1960s, as the majors added eight teams and were joined by expansion in professional football, basketball and hockey.

Until the early 1950s, MLB had 16 teams in 10 cities, none west of St. Louis. The moves of the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants to the West Coast in 1958 triggered a series of events that pressured owners into the first of five expansions that would ultimately add 14 teams.

While its role in the growth of the game is unquestioned, baseball's expansion has not been without its missteps. Three of the franchises have moved: Senators to Texas, the Seattle Pilots to Milwaukee and Montreal Expos to Washington. Six of the 14 have won world championships, and two have never been to the World Series. (The Rangers, relocated from Washington in 1972, made it for the first time last year). The franchises have averaged 1.4 pennants in their history. It took an average of eight seasons to record their first winning record. None has a franchise won-lost record of .500 or better.

"You lose 100 games four or five tears in a row, it gets you 160 to 200 games under .500," says former Angels All-Star Jim Fregosi, who broke in with the 1961 team in September.

Despite a record 120 losses in their debut season, the New York Mets can make a case as the most successful expansion franchise, with four pennants and two World Series titles. None of the others has more than two league titles, though the Toronto Blue Jays and Florida Marlins each won two world championships in significantly fewer years.

Of the first eight expansion teams (including the mega-market Mets and Angels), only one drew 1 million fans its first season: Montreal in 1969.

Outside pressures — the threats of a rival league, of loss of baseball's antitrust exemption and of lawsuits from jilted cities — were factors in several expansions and clearly provided the impetus for the first.

"Had they not been pushed, it would have been years. They always talked about expansion … but I think they were going to fight it as long as they could," says Michael Shapiro, author of Bottom of the Ninth which chronicles the formation of the Continental League in the late 1950s.

After the Dodgers and Giants left New York, Mayor Robert Wagner enlisted attorney William Shea to secure a National League team to replace them. Shea, for whom the Mets' stadium for 45 years was named, joined forces with legendary baseball executive Branch Rickey to form the Continental League, which was to begin play in 1961.

The prospect of a rival league moving into untapped markets and Congress' interest in diluting baseball's antitrust exemption if expansion was blocked prompted owners to agree to add four teams. The NL admitted New York and Houston for 1962, and the AL added Los Angeles and Washington, bumping their start date to 1961.

Shapiro argues that Rickey's model, which included sharing television revenues, would have fueled more significant growth of the national pastime than it otherwise achieved. He says American Football League founder Lamar Hunt incorporated many of Rickey's ideas into his new league, which was instrumental in pro football's ascension in the 1960s. Rickey's dream of a new league died with expansion but, Shapiro says, "the experiment that ended up in failure really changed American sports. It opened the way for football to pass baseball."

Different starts for different clubs

While the most recent expansion teams, the Arizona Diamondbacks and Tampa Bay Rays, had three years to prepare for their inaugural season, the early expansions were hurried, seat-of-the-pants endeavors.

The Angels, who will mark their milestone with a season-long celebration, are the prime example. In December 1960, Hollywood cowboy Gene Autry attended the American League expansion meetings in St. Louis seeking to secure the radio rights for the new West Coast team. He came home as owner of the Angels.

The expansion draft was eight days later. General manager Fred Haney, who had accompanied Autry to St. Louis as his prospective broadcaster, teamed with newly named manager Bill Rigney to select 28 players for a total of $2.15 million.

Grba, who was on the New York Yankees' 1960 World Series roster and was the first pick overall, recalls the first spring training as a little chaotic. Among those trying out for the team was country singer Charley Pride.

The Angels played the first year at L.A.'s Wrigley Field, a minor league park best known as the home of the television show Home Run Derby in the 1950s and '60s. The next four years, they played at Dodger Stadium, where Fregosi says they were "second-class citizens" to the well-established NL team.

"We called it Chavez Ravine. They called it Dodger Stadium," Fregosi says.

The Angels won a surprising 70 games the first year and shocked baseball the next season, winning 86 games and holding first place, a half game ahead of the Yankees, on July 4.

By Mike Rynearson, Arizona Republic

Roland Hemond, who won a World Series with the Milwaukee Braves in 1957, says baseball is as strong as ever post-expansion. "There were some players playing in the major leagues in the '50s that probably wouldn't make clubs in the major leagues today."

"On Labor Day, we were still in the race. Then we ran out of gas in September," says Roland Hemond, the Angels' first scouting director and now a special assistant to the Diamondbacks president.

Grba says Rigney often commented he knew his team "all came to play. They partied and had fun, but he always knew where he could get hold of someone — just call this one bar."

The Angels had stocked up on recognizable names and paid the price a few years later when the veterans faltered and the farm system was still in development. "The aging players gave it their best shot, but some of them were waning," Hemond says. "And the players we were signing in the farm system for the most part weren't ready, so we got caught in a bind."

The New York Mets drafted with the same philosophy the following year, bringing in former Dodgers and Giants, and their 120- loss season is still a modern-day record. Four more teams were added for the 1969 season, without much more preparation. The two NL entries, the Montreal Expos and San Diego Padres, each lost 110 games the first year and needed at least 10 years to field a winner.

"The struggle for expansion teams (in the '60s) probably was longer than recent expansions. … Montreal had no minor league system," says Bill Stoneman, an original Expo and now senior adviser for the Angels.

Stoneman was drafted from the Chicago Cubs and didn't know what to expect from the first Canadian big-league city.

"When they advised me Montreal had drafted me, I had to go dig out a map," he says with a laugh. "I knew it was in Canada, but I didn't know if it was eastern or western."

The city, historically a solid minor league town, embraced the new club. Before its opener in New York, the team was flown into Montreal for a parade, with fans lining the streets to greet the players riding in convertible cars. "You win the World Series, that's the kind of parade you get," Stoneman recalls.

Next expansion could be global

The benefits of the Expansion Era are obvious — total MLB attendance is more than 70 million a year; its high of 79.5 million in 2007 is four times the total gate in 1960. Expansion is probably second only to television as a factor in the game's growth.

Critics say expansion has diluted the talent in the big leagues, a contention that Thorn and Hemond reject.

The country's population has swelled from 180 million in 1960 to 308 million today, and the influx of players from Latin America and Asia also has added significantly to the pool.

"We're able to staff 30 teams because more people are available," Hemond says. "There were some players playing in the major leagues in the '50s that probably wouldn't make clubs in the major leagues today."

"For me, it's incontrovertible that baseball on the field is better than it was in each proceeding generation," says Thorn, author of Baseball in the Garden of Eden, a look at the history and myths of baseball's early days. "Every 20 years, it's better than the game was 20 years ago."

While most everyone agrees the current 30-team alignment isn't ideal, future expansion isn't imminent. Commissioner Bud Selig consistently says there are no plans.

"I don't see it," says Stoneman, general manager of the Angels for eight seasons before assuming his current position 3½ years ago. "We have clubs right now that can't compete on a consistent basis, and that's a problem baseball has got to address before they ever consider expansion."

Whenever it comes, the next expansion is likely to be international, perhaps in Asia or Central America.

"I could envision with the mode of travel (improving), it might be teams from other countries," Hemond says. "If you had a team in Mexico and in Japan, television rights would go up some more. .... It would help with the growth and popularity of the game on a much larger scope."

Hemond and Thorn say expanding to 32 teams would present a number of alignment possibilities, with or without a wild card, to ease scheduling issues.

"I have no magic eight-ball on the timing, but it seems to me 30 is an awkward number," Thorn says. "Who knows what the possibilities will be a decade from now, but baseball is an international pastime, not merely one franchise in Canada. Perhaps one in Japan, perhaps one in Australia. The travel complexities are above my pay grade, but it would be great."

***

How the 14 teams from the Expansion Era
have fared:

Team

First year

Postseason appearances

Division titles

Pennants

World Series titles

Wins

Losses

Percentage

L.A. Angels

1961

9

8

1

1

3,970

4,006

.498

Washington/Texas

1961

4

4

1

0

3,753

4,206

.472

N.Y. Mets

1962

7

5

4

2

3,737

4,066

.479

Houston

1962

9

6

1

0

3,888

3,926

.498

Kansas City

1969

7

6

2

1

3,214

3,457

.482

Seattle/Milwaukee

1969

3

2

1

0

3,168

3,509

.474

San Diego

1969

5

5

2

0

3,101

3,582

.464

Montreal/Washington

1969

1

0

0

0

3,168

3,506

.475

Toronto

1977

5

5

2

2

2,678

2,710

.497

Seattle

1977

4

3

0

0

2,524

2,865

.468

Florida

1993

2

0

2

2

1,366

1,487

.479

Colorado

1993

3

0

1

0

1,367

1,491

.478

Arizona

1998

4

4

1

1

1,037

1,074

.491

Tampa Bay

1998

2

2

1

0

922

1,186

.437

Records through Wednesday's games.

Source: USA TODAY research

For more information about reprints & permissions, visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.